*got the following email response from senator:* Thank you for contacting me regarding the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 (S. 386). I appreciate hearing from you. The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, introduced by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to increase the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas and eliminate the per-country cap for employment-based immigrant visas. The legislation does not increase the number of immigrant visas granted annually. On December 18, 2019, I came to the Senate floor and announced a bipartisan agreement with Senator Lee to amend the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. The agreement would make three changes to improve this bill. First, it would better protect immigrants and their families who are stuck in the employment-based immigrant visa backlog by allowing immigrant workers and their immediate family members to be eligible for “early filing” for their green cards. Immigrant workers would not receive their green cards early, but they would be able to switch jobs and travel without losing immigration status. The amendment also protects the children of immigrant workers from “aging out” of green-card eligibility so they would not face deportation while they are waiting for a green card. Second, the amendment would reserve 4,600 green cards on an annual basis for dependent family members and new immigrant workers who are stuck overseas and would not not be eligible for early filing. This number is based on the approximate number of people who apply for employment green cards from overseas each year who are not otherwise accounted for in the bill. Finally, the amendment would address abuse of H-1B temporary work visas by prohibiting a company from hiring additional H-1B workers if the company’s workforce has more than 50 employees and more than 50 percent temporary workers. This commonsense bipartisan reform would stop outsourcing firms from abusing the H-1B visa to exploit immigrant workers and offshore American jobs. Our legal immigration system does not provide nearly enough immigrant visas, also known as green cards. As a result, immigrants are stuck in the backlog for many years. This is a hardship for families who are caught in immigration limbo. Close to four million future Americans are on the State Department's immigrant visa waiting list, in addition to hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States who are also waiting for green cards. However, under current law, only 226,000 family green cards and 140,000 employment green cards are available annually. The solution to this problem is increasing the number of green cards to eliminate this backlog. I have introduced the Resolving Extended Limbo for Immigrant Employees and Families (RELIEF) Act (S. 2603), legislation that would eliminate the entire current family and employment green card backlog within five years by increasing the number of green cards. This legislation would help keep American families together by classifying spouses and children of LPRs as immediate relatives and exempting derivative beneficiaries of employment-based petitions from annual green card limits, protect aging out children who qualify for LPR status based on a parent’s immigration petition, and lift country caps. I will keep your views in mind as the debate continues. I will continue to work to fix our broken immigration system. Thank you for contacting my office. Please feel free to keep in touch. Sincerely, Richard J. Durbin United States Senator
This is awesome. It's great that senator Durbin sees country of birth isn't a skill. Go 386
Go where? Back to India?
Nah ! Here to stay and see 386 pass. 😁
Do not want. But if a Non-IV is here on a work visa and they apply for IV while in the states, that's a different story. If you're here, I want you to stay. We don't have room for 4 Million SWEs here. Or maybe you do. You wanna know what 80k TC in SV feels like? Support this kind of stuff.
IV? Not sure what you’re talking about - s386 does not increase the number of green cards - removes the per country caps on green card distribution.
Does IV here mean immigration violations?
The bill must harden new H1/L1 visa requirements , and issue GC to all who have i140 approved for more than 6 months. Once that is done , H4 EAD can be happily scrapped. Forever extension of H1B based on i140 is a form of worker abuse. I hope someone takes this issue to UNO as Human Rights Violation issue.
Increasing GC count makes no sense. Just issue GC to everyone stuck in US for now. Passing a new rule is a stupid idea, it won’t fix anything for now. Senator just wants to make some money by delaying it. He needs bribe so that he can retire.
“Immigrant workers would not receive their green cards early, but they would be able to switch jobs and travel without losing immigration status” - isn’t that what you are trying to improve in the first place? You might as well say I’m going to drop my pants and fire a rocket and boom, problems solved. LOL
🚬
This doesn’t increase the number of new immigrants, only makes it easier for immigrants to move from one company to another. I’d say that this’ll increase the pay that’s artificially held down due to archaic immigration policies.
Well put!
This is what citizens don’t understand. If there is a provision to underpay certain type of US employees , others are also impacted equally. They get replaced for cheaper workers.
I support this, and I immigrated here from an "easy" country (no backlog of applications). I'm not any more special than an Indian engineer though, seems unfair I got the easy road. Definitely appreciate the fear around changing jobs on H1B. Not subject to that anymore but I'm glad they've been making it easier
I don't know what either of those acronyms stand for. I'm Canadian homie
If the system was fair we wouldn't have this many Indians in the industry
The bill fixes it by capping h1 abuse.
No. It does not rule out the previous abuser.
This news is all over the place. The new amended version doesn’t have enough votes, and there is a significant chance someone else may object making it not passable by unanimous consent.
Thats what all the opposers are telling. S386 has crossed so many blocks yet. It will pass soon. Better you focus on supporting/lobbying a bill which will increase GC as S386 will pass very soon.
You’re naive and unfamiliar with US politics like most Indians, but I like your dreamy optimism.
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Wouldn’t the proposed 50:50 clause help with that ?
In the future, not for people already in backlog